IMPORTANT: Site Upgrade Coming on July 1st

Hey all!

On July 1^st, 2016, LoversLab will be making its 2^nd attempt to transition to the newest version of the forum software.
Many of you will remember the disastrous attempt we made last year, which ultimately did not work out and resulted in the site having to revert back to a several weeks old backup from before the update. This time, however, we are significantly more prepared for it.

To start, the current version of the site will not simply go away immediately. On July 1^st, the current version of LoversLab site will remain the primary URL for loverslab.com. However, from that point there will be a secondary site, with a different URL (to be announced), which will be the future site. The new site will use the updated forum software (IPB 4.1) and will use a copy of the data from the July 1st version of the site.

After 48-72 hours have passed, these 2 versions of the site shall flip and the new version of the site shall become the primary one, and the old (currently used) version will be moved to a backup/archive URL so users may copy any data off it they might have missed moving during the 48-72 hour period while both versions of the site were up.

This time, the change should go much smoother due to this transition period between the two. The site is much more prepared for the changes after the lessons learned last time, (I know what to expect now), not to mention both the software and server setup have matured in significant ways.


This is the update plan with the occurring dates:

• July 1^st: loverslab.com = IPB 3.4 - Old software, read/write, primary site, current content at Jul 1^st.
• July 1^st: new.loverslab.com = IPB 4.1 - New software, read/write, secondary site, current content at Jul 1^st. It will be mid conversion for a couple of days, as the conversion to 4.1 takes some time. The original version remains the "primary version" for 48-72 hours, to prevent any major moving pains.
• July 3^rd: loverslab.com = IPB 4.1 - The new site will be established as the primary site, replacing the old one. Therefore, “new.loverslab.com” will be renamed “loverslab.com”. The content that is accessible on July 3^rd will be the content that was there on July 1^st; the conversion process to 4.1 should be completed by July 3^rd. Be aware that any changes/posts/threads/uploads made to the old 3.4 version between Jul 1^st and 3^rd will be lost and not available on the new version of the site.
• July 3^rd: archive.loverslab.com = IPB 3.4 - formerly loverslab.com – all content from the previous site prior to July 3^rd will be available on this archive site. This version of the forum will become read only.
• July 31^st: archive.loverslab.com = IPB 3.4 - On July 31st archive.loverslab.com will be shut down. The archived information will no longer be available. (We’ll still have a backup of this version just in case shit goes sideways like last time.)
  

It will essentially be the reverse of what happened when the site reverted back to 3.4 after the last attempt to upgrade. This should hopefully allow for some breathing room during the transition, rather than last time where everybody was essentially immediately thrown into the deep end.